


Definitions of Intimacy

by AMarguerite



Category: Pride and Prejudice & Related Fandoms, Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: F/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 14:05:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17265533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: There are many definitions of intimacy. Elizabeth explores some of them in the early days of her marriage to Darcy.





	Definitions of Intimacy

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by ratheralark and stultiloquinta's tumblr talk of bedsharing as a sign of honor and trust (https://stultiloquentia.tumblr.com/post/181280975610/pillow-talk#tumblr_notes), and also my utter inability to discover if the whole "separate bedroom for master and mistress of an estate" thing so prominent in all my favorite Regency romances has any basis in historical reality. 
> 
> All definitions of intimacy come from this online edition of the 1755 Johnson Dictionary: https://bit.ly/2LOgede

**_To_ ** **INTIMATE** .  _ v _ .  _ a _ . [intimer, French.]

To hint ; to point out indirectly, or not very plainly 

*

For all her protestations that in marrying Darcy she would not be quitting her sphere, Elizabeth soon realized that there were complications that came with living on ten thousand a year as a family of two, that one could not imagine while living on two thousand, with seven. 

She was deeply puzzled as to the floor plan of Pemberley. On her tour with Mrs. Reynolds, and in the dinners and afternoon visits she and her aunt had made, they had never ventured outside of the rooms open to the pubic, or to visitors, but from things Darcy had said, and enthusiastic drawings from Georgiana, she could not understand exactly the arrangement of family rooms. Nor could she entirely determine where it was she was to sleep and dress.

“Presumably with my husband,” said Elizabeth, rearranging various sketches and notes on her dressing table, “but mother waxed rhapsodic about the suite of rooms I was to have, and did not mention Mr. Darcy  _ once _ , though she mentioned velvet chaise-longes multiple times, so I have no real idea where he is to go. Perhaps I shall store him in a cupboard, and take him out when I have visitors I wish to impress.” 

Jane sat in their shared bed, thoughtfully braiding her hair. “Can you not ask Mr. Darcy?”

“Jane,” said Elizabeth, with fond exasperation, “he is not your Bingley. He is a delicate creature, and I hate to embarrass him. He was all blushes and confusion when I mentioned the other evening that I was sewing bedcurtains for my trousseau. I will not distress him for anything in the world.”

“I suppose you cannot write to Mrs. Reynolds on so delicate a subject,” said Jane. “Nor to Georgiana. But surely Mama meant you would share a bedroom but have seperate dressing rooms? I understand from Nichols that that is the arrangement at Netherfield, as it is here. But then again, Pemberley is very fine.”

“Yes, and scouring the papers has been of no help. The Prince Regent and Princess Caroline have separate  _ houses _ , not just separate beds, but then again, they are not my definition of marital felicity.”

“Perhaps you are looking at houses a little _ too _ fine,” said Jane, dimpling. “Do you recall if you still have your guidebook of Derbyshire? Perhaps it might tell you of Pemberley, or at least of houses very like it.”

“Dear Jane! Why do I never think to ask you, when you solve all my problems so neatly?”

Unfortunately, Jane’s advice, though sensible, did not answer Elizabeth’s questions. Her guidebook on the great houses of Derbyshire mentioned the family rooms, but did not go into detail on them, unless someone had been murdered in them, or the tapestries were particularly fine. Elizabeth collapsed histrionically upon the bed, and buried her face under a pillow.

She felt the bed dip as Jane edged towards her, and then allowed herself to roll towards the center, and Jane’s comforting embrace. 

“Lizzy,” said Jane, “is it the arrangement of bedrooms that particularly worries you, or what… it signifies?”

“Oh the floorplans merely,” said Elizabeth, with a frisson of anxiety she attempted to laugh off. “I should hate to become mistress of Pemberley only to embarrass myself before all the servants as soon as I arrive there.”

“They cannot expect you to know the house if you have never been in.” Jane paused, delicately. “Has Aunt Gardiner talked with you yet? Or has she talked with you in the past? I know when I went to stay in London the first time, and that gentleman kindly wrote me poetry, she did… explain exactly what one might expect in marriage—”

“We live too near the home farm for all that to be a mystery,” said Elizabeth. “And she did, most kindly. And most recently again when we went up to London for our wedding clothes. No it— I don’t know. It seems appallingly forward to admit to  _ wishing  _ to share a bed with Mr. Darcy.”

“I cannot think it so very forward. You are engaged to be married. Surely he would be flattered if you told him.”

“And I love him so dearly,” said Elizabeth, tears springing suddenly to her eyes. “He knows it; he cannot doubt I wish to be with him always. Even in sleep. I do not know why I am all nerves, Jane.” 

“I confess to being a little bewildered myself.” Jane straightened the skittish bow at the end of Elizabeth’s sleeping braid, then, eyeing it critically, pulled it out altogether. “Your braid is unraveling already. Shall I fix your hair for you?”

Elizabeth did. It was vastly soothing to let Jane drag the brush through her hair, to feel the soft tugs of Jane dividing her hair and deftly braiding it. “What bewilders you, Jane?”

“It is partly that I have known, all my life, I must save… certain liberties for my husband, and to engage in them with any other gentleman, in any other context is not merely the worst thing I can ever do, but the worst thing I can ever do to my family. But now,  _ by  _ doing it, I fulfill my duties to all and hopefully bring happiness to all. It is… an odd adjustment. Then, too, I have never shared a bed with anyone but you. What if—” Jane paused; Elizabeth turned, to see Jane blushing. 

“What?”

“It sounds very silly, but what if Mr. Bingley should snore?”

Elizabeth burst out laughing. “He is too much a paragon for that. And besides, you will adjust. You gone this long with my habit of stealing all the bed clothes, and talking to you before we blow out the candles.”

“I find it difficult to sleep when we do not,” said Jane.  

“I think I am more afraid that Mr. Darcy shall not like my talking at him, when he is trying to sleep, than anything else. I have a horror of enacting mother and father’s bedtime ritual, of him attempting to read, as Mama chatters at him.” 

“I cannot think  _ you  _ in any great fear of that,” Jane said. “Mr. Darcy is always talking to you.”

“Yes, but what if… what if he should find it silly, my talking over the day, as I do with you? Mr. Bingley is so agreeable, he is sure to listen to anything you have to say.” 

Jane had not the quick wits of Elizabeth or Mr. Bennet; she was not in the least unintelligent, but the workings of her mind, though a little more sedate, were correspondingly more thorough. “Elizabeth, you will not have a marriage like mother and father. It will not be an unequal partnership, as they have. Perhaps we are not as rich as Mr. Darcy, or his family, but we are of the same sphere. He is not marrying his chambermaid.”

“That is how Lady Catherine sees it, I am sure.”

Jane tied off Elizabeth’s braid and rested her hands on Elizabeth’s shoulders. “I know you joke because you are uncomfortable, but Elizabeth, really. You are not mismatched in terms of intellect, or interests. I think you have more gifts, in certain respects, than even Mr. Darcy. He does not know how to talk to people, as you do. He will gain as much by this match as you will, merely in a different way; and that, I think,  _ is  _ what makes a good match. That is, that the differences of the two people’s characters compliment and complete the other’s.” She put her arms around Elizabeth’s shoulders. “Perhaps you will have to introduce him to our habit, but he may enjoy it.”

“I cannot imagine he has ever had a bedfellow,” said Elizabeth. “Nor one as good as you. In that, at least, I am much richer than him.”     

  
*

**INTIMATE** .  _ a _ . [irtimus, Lat.]

Near; not kept at distance. 

*

Elizabeth had petitioned to spend their wedding night at Darcy’s house in London, instead of Netherfield, a request Darcy granted with almost unflattering alacrity. Elizabeth felt almost robbed, not having to present her imaginary itinerary to Pemberley, where they would honeymoon, and irritable with tenderness that Darcy suggested— without her at all prompting it— that they might stay a day or two, and take in a play. The desire to be exasperated over his eagerness to be alone with her, fought with the desire to be flattered by it, until desire itself entered the mix and she fell abruptly silent and blushed. He did as well, and they had resolutely not talked of their plans again.

Now, standing in the foyer of Darcy House, a footman taking away her wedding present from Darcy, an ermine-lined pelisse that had cost more than the entire wedding breakfast, she wished they had talked a little more about what they were to do, and where they were to go. Darcy stood there, servants taking his hat and overcoat, looking splendidly fitted to the house. He was tall enough for the high ceilings, handsome enough for the beautiful decor, and so— 

— oh she hadn’t words for him; merely the impulse to hold her hands out to him.

Darcy took them, smilingly, and there was some business with the staff, which Elizabeth tried to pay attention to, but he  _ would  _ tuck her hand in the crook of his arm, and she could not draw her attention away from that point of contact for very long. Elizabeth knew herself to be absurd, for she had teased him into kissing her before, and kissing her  _ quite  _ often during the carriage ride up to London. How could she be so flustered from so commonplace a courtesy? He had offered her his arm countless times before. It should not move her as it did.

Perhaps it was the context? Now she was holding  _ her husband’s  _ arm; he had extended the courtesy of his support to  _ his wife.  _

Or perhaps it was the way he looked at her as he did it? He seemed… proud of her. Darcy looked at her as if she belonged in this house as much as he did, or as if the house itself existed only to do her credit. Elizabeth could feel herself blossoming under the warm sun of his regard, and though she did not perfectly recall the names or positions of any of the servants, she was sure she greeted them all while beaming.

Darcy himself led her upstairs to wash off the dust of travel before sitting down to dinner; and put his hand over where hers rested, in the crook of his arm. When she looked up at him he was smiling still. The nearness of him made her feel almost intoxicated. After looking over her shoulder to ensure the servants had all vanished below stairs for their dinner preparations, she pulled lightly on his arm.

Darcy bent instinctively towards her and she kissed him.

She had never kissed him before— or rather, she had always teased Darcy into initiating anything, not entirely sure if his delight in her impertinence would extend to the instigation of physical affection, but now they were married— why, presumably she had a right to kiss him whenever she liked? She had not been an entirely attentive parishioner during the wedding ceremony, too excited to be married, too distracted by Darcy standing beside her, dressed so splendidly, but she did recall vowing to love and cherish him. 

‘Do you feel loved and cherished?’ seemed a stupid question to ask, however, and so when Darcy gently ended the kiss, to look down at her upturned face with utmost tenderness, she said, “If you look like that each time I kiss you, I really do not know how I shall ever stop kissing you long enough to enjoy such a look.” Following through on her promise made him laugh and take her into a set of very prettily furnished rooms. The dressing room had some other gifts for her— Elizabeth would have married Darcy on a tenth of his income, but decided it was really very splendid, to be the doted upon bride of a very rich man— and the bedroom itself was everything lovely. 

“This is yours,” said Darcy, watching her with an eagerness, not untinged with anxiety. “All of it— you may change it as you wish. Georgiana assisted me in refitting the room, to what we thought you might like—”

Elizabeth set down the vase of roses she had been inspecting (roses! In winter!) and held out her hands to him. “A room only needs you in it to be perfect for me.”

Darcy took her hands in his and smoothed the backs of them with the pads of his thumbs. She knew he spoke least when he felt most, and in his silence she heard more of love than she had heard on any stage. Almost abruptly he raised her hands to his lips and kissed them, before leading her to a door in the wall.  “Here,” he said. “I will be here, Elizabeth— near you, always. And at Pemberley. Any time you wish for me, I am yours. All that I am, all that I have—“

Elizabeth has no words; she pulled him towards her by their joined hands and kissed him, coquettishly moving her hands behind her back, so that he must hold her. This he did, tenderly and gently, and Elizabeth asked into his kiss, “But what if I wish for you every night?”

“Then,” he said, his voice low and rough, “you shall have me every night.” 

  
*

**INTIMATION** . ʃ. [from intimate.] 

Hint ; obscure or indirect declaration or direction. 

*

Elizabeth had been put to bed by her new French maid with all the pomp of Louis XIV going to bed at Versailles, and kept her eyes on Darcy’s door. Would he come to her? Was she to go to him?

She cast her eyes about the room, and saw a book on the table nearest the bed. Though she doubted she would be in any state of mind to read, Elizabeth picked up the novel. It was one she had mentioned wanting to read, a novel of Maria Edgeworth’s, but she could not focus. After staring at the same two pages for some ten minutes, she reached for her watch, despaired, and then decided she must take matters into her own hands. 

Elizabeth knocked on the door.

A muffled noise from Darcy’s room; she nudged the door open to see him in his own bed. “Darcy?” 

Darcy looked up; he was in his nightshirt, reading on his side, supported on one bent arm, the book balanced on a fold of the bedsheets. “Elizabeth?”

“I am not interrupting, I hope,” said Elizabeth, flushed and self-conscious.  

“No, I always read before I retire. I did not know—” He shut the book, which Elizabeth took as an invitation to approach the bed. Darcy watched her, with a strangely intense expression that Elizabeth could not quite parse. “I did not know how long it might take you to undress.” He attempted one of his dry little jokes. “I understand from Georgiana that I always underestimate how long it takes to dress. I dared not estimate wrongly so early on into our marriage, and set a bad precedent for rushing you, when you are not yet ready.”

Elizabeth blushingly tucked a lock of hair, already loose from her lackadaisical sleeping braid, behind her ear. His courtesy moved her unspeakably. “Do you… do you prefer me to come to you when I am done, then?” 

“It seems the most practical solution; it never takes me more than a quarter of an hour with my valet. And then….” He trailed off, distracted, as Elizabeth shyly sat on the edge of the bed, facing him. “I read. Before retiring. As I mentioned.”

“You did.” Elizabeth hesitated, and then reached for his book. “And what is it you read, sir?”

He looked embarrassed. “A novel, merely—”

But she had reached for the book before he could cover it. “ _ Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure!  _ Good God, Mr. Darcy.”

Darcy looked harassed and sat up. “It was not— you must not believe I ordinarily seek out such material. Nor did I purchase it. My grandfather, I believe, added this to the hidden shelf in the library. It is only— I have not….”

They had not much discussed their own histories, as it touched on intimacies with others, not that Elizabeth had anything to offer. She loved parlor games with kissing forfeits, and, as one of the local beauties of Meryton, had always been a much sought-after partner; and though she’d had her favorites in the past, Darcy was the only one she had ever kissed outside of the context of a game. 

Elizabeth supposed Darcy had some experience, for what man who lived in the world did not, but Darcy was not immoral or irreligious. She could not picture him keeping a mistress, or taking advantage of a servant, and he had conveyed, in his shy, halting way, over the course of their engagement, that he had never loved anyone, or wanted anyone as much as he did her. 

She hesitated and then slid under the bedsheets beside him. “Well, I do not wish to unduly disturb your habits, particularly since I am sure you picked tonight’s reading for its, er… instructional… benefits.”

Darcy groaned and hid his face in the pillows.

Her face flamed; she was so self-conscious she wished to joke, but so mortified she felt tongue-tied. Elizabeth attempted to find some way forward. “Shall I read aloud to you?”

He raised his head to stare at her. “What?”

“That is… I think I am to be the, ah, recipient of what lessons gleaned from your reading, so it— it stands to reason—” Oh good God. Elizabeth had never felt quite this embarrassed in her entire life.  _ And yet.  _ She knew how she affected him, and knew what she wanted but did not know how to ask for it, or what to do to get there. This seemed as good an overture as any— a compromise between his old habits and their new reality, and one close enough to her habit of speaking with Jane before sleeping that Elizabeth felt obscurely comforted at the idea. “Shall I read to you, sir?”

Darcy made no objection, but, then again, he was still stared at her as if he had not heard her correctly. Perhaps he hadn’t. Elizabeth found it too awkward to look him in the eye and so used him as a back rest. If she considered the book solely as a parody  of a conduct novel, she could read it with her usual spirit, and her impertinence drew Darcy from the welter of embarrassment and self-consciousness in which he had been resting. 

It did, however, become difficult to read on when the text grew more explicit.

“—hands became extremely free, and wander'd over my whole body, with touches, squeezes, pressures, that rather warm'd and surpriz'd me with their novelty, than they either shock'd or alarm'd me.” Elizabeth had to pause, as Darcy slowly put his hands to her hips. She leaned back against him and Darcy slid his hands up, around the soft curve of her stomach, to her ribcage, to her breasts. The thin muslin of her nightrail felt as if it would melt away under his touch. She ached for him. 

“Is this…?” Darcy asked.

“You make the text come alive for me sir,” Elizabeth said, with a half-breathless laugh. “Oh! Do not stop, I beg you.”

“Perhaps,” he said, low and rough in her ear, “you might continue.”

This she did, in trembling accents, with frequent pauses as Darcy drew inspiration from the passages, making her squirm and press back against him, feeling the effect this unusual reading had on him. He at length drew her nightrail up her thighs, with many a trailing off question, often interrupted by her eager assent, and she trembled with anticipation. They neither of them had the ability to speak directly of what they wanted, or what they were doing, but had come to a stage of intimacy, where hints and insinuations were understood, and Elizabeth could both comprehend and consent to the question posed when he hesitated with his hand on the hem of her nightrail or the inside of her thigh. 

Upon the phrase, “inflamed beyond the power of modesty,” Darcy bunched her nightrail up to her hips, and Elizabeth gave up any pretense of reading, focused only on the hands now wandering, on a wonderfully indirect course, towards the most intimate part of her.

“Is this…?”

“Yes! Oh yes.”

The book tumbled from her hand to the floor, and was utterly forgot. 

  
*

**INTIMATE** .  _ a _ . [irtimus, Lat.]

Familiar; closely acquainted. 

*

Elizabeth had not slept much yesterday and had gone to the theatre that evening. Though she felt she ought to be tired, she could not sleep when she put her head upon the pillow. When they had arrived home, Darcy had kissed her forehead and said vaguely that it seemed she needed her sleep. His kiss and his tone were full of tenderness but Elizabeth had the distinct impression that her husband wished to sleep on his own. She hoped she had not stolen all his share of the bed linens, or snored in his ear or— well. Their activities had resulted in a certain amount of… mess. And for so fastidious a man that might be unpleasant. But he had taken such clear pleasure in it— surely that couldn’t be it? 

She turned over, flushing. No, that certainly wasn’t it. They had been so conscious of each other, all that day. So aware of the new, closer understanding they both had of the bodies hidden beneath their clothes, of how the other appeared, sounded, tasted even, when there was no other person around, at the moment of greatest vulnerability. Darcy had certainly enjoyed that form of intimacy. There was such heat to his gaze now. 

But if so….

Her thoughts galloped round and round this impossible track— did her husband wish her with him tonight? He must not— but why?— like a horse training for the Derby. 

Perhaps her unquiet mind, these thoughts consuming themselves like an ouroboros of marital anxiety, was the result of exhaustion? Perhaps Darcy  _ was  _ right, and she did need her sleep, but it seemed impossible to find it.

Elizabeth sat up and hugged her knees, recalling how difficult it had been to sleep at her aunt and uncle’s house in London, the first time she had gone up without Jane, until her aunt suggested she had begun reserving the time just before bed for writing to Jane. Elizabeth scanned the room. She had no, pen, paper, or ink here; that was all in a pretty rosewood secretaire Darcy had installed in his study for her.

She reached for her watch. It was not so very late. If she talked with him, she was sure she could sleep. Darcy would not grudge her that; he was too good, too kind a man. 

When she knocked and opened the door, Darcy was reading again. He was more surprised to see her than before, and shut his book with a snap. “Elizabeth?”

Though he had given her permission to use his first name, it still seemed unnatural and unwieldy to call him ‘Fitzwilliam.’ “Good evening, sir. I am not— I do not intrude, I hope?”

“No, no, not at all,” he said, and immediately pulled back the bed covers so that she could join him under them. 

It was cold; Elizabeth stretched her legs gratefully towards the bed warmer and, already feeling better said, with no preamble, just as she would talk with Jane, “I very much enjoyed the play, but Miss Smith did not quite answer my expectations. A Beatrice must be… light, bright, and sparkling. Not quite so bitter. That is— perhaps her humor comes from a place of bitterness, as a defense against a world so cruel as to destroy her beloved cousin Hero on rumor alone, but I think it is more effective if it is hinted rather than made quite so obvious.”

“The parts were more ill-suited than usual,” Darcy agreed, a little bewildered. But they had never had difficulty talking to each other, once they had hit upon a subject that interested them both equally, and he warmed to the subject. “But I have often thought that I cannot be impartial about  _ Much Ado About Nothing. _ It is a play I have read often on my own and I think any actor would be unable to do justice to the characters that live within my mind.”  

“Did you like the after-piece?”

“I found little merit in it.”

Elizabeth laughed. “For shame, sir. That was all everyone talked of, when we mentioned we would go to Drury Lane. I did not think it  _ entirely  _ without merit.”

“I never said it was  _ without  _ merit, merely that it had very little.”

They discussed this for some time, falling as easily into debate as they always did, until Elizabeth at last grew relaxed, her thoughts settling like a cat turning circles and then at last laying down. She was happy with this, to have discovered within the familiarity of their debate a way to sort through her day, to settle it and herself. 

However, Darcy seemed to think her too shy or modest to say clearly what she had come in for, and cleared his throat. “I was, uhm. Reading another book when you came in, but we left off last night at an… interesting point. Should you care to continue?”

That was not what she came in for, but she could not deny the appeal of it. Elizabeth had become acquainted with her husband’s body the evening previous and, in doing so, reframed her relationship with her own body in sufficiently intriguing terms to make her wish to explore all aspects of the connection. 

Elizabeth let her gaze wander, quite wantonly, over her husband, until she saw him blush. “Oh yes, very much indeed.”

  
*

**INTIMATE** . [intimado. Spaniſh.]

A familiar friend ; one who is trusted with our thoughts.

*

While on the road, it was more convenient to share a room, according to Darcy, which gave Elizabeth hope that they would share a bed more permanently when they reached Pemberley. But, alas, it was not to be. Mrs. Reynolds took her on a tour of the family rooms— an amusing echo of her tour of Pemberley earlier that summer— and Elizabeth found that at Pemberley, she had her own bedroom, dressing room, and sitting room. Even though she knew this to be a great honor, that very few women could boast of so much privacy— particularly such luxurious privacy, full of roses in Wedgewood vases, Aubusson carpets, velvet chaise-longes, silk gowns, and ermine pelisses—it was a very solitary splendor. 

“And pray,” asked Elizabeth, suddenly struck by a stray thought, “were these always the mistress’s rooms?”

“No, ma’am, these particular rooms were done up for Lady Anne, shortly after her marriage. The late Mr. Darcy wished her to have all the luxuries to which she was accustomed in her father the Earl’s house.”

Elizabeth was flattered her husband thought she deserved the same privacy as the daughter of an Earl, but could not square her understanding of a bedfellow with the honor he meant to do her by giving her her own bedroom.   

She would rather have the intimacy of his love, than the honor of it; to be mistress of Pemberley meant— well not  _ nothing  _ to her, but it was so astonishing a place because of its master. 

But she had been staring silently at a painting for too long; she turned from it and made some joke about being entirely unable to tell what the subject was.

“The master will hang his Turners everywhere ma’am,” said Mrs. Reynolds, with the exasperated fondness she might have used when describing young master Fitzwilliam tracking in mud every time he played outside. “There is a nice Fragonard of some shepherdesses that Lady Anne bought special from Paris if you prefer it.”

“Thank you. I shall ask Mr. Darcy if he does not mind, or if there is a… more intelligible landscape he can part with, for my rooms. Where are his rooms?”

“Through here ma’am.” Mrs. Reynolds showed her the door. 

That evening Elizabeth stared at the door, trying to come up with some way of putting into words a request she was not sure she herself understood, and that she doubted her husband would understand. 

She missed her sister— perhaps she should begin with that? Darcy could understand that, surely. After the wedding breakfast Georgiana had gone to stay with her uncle and aunt the Earl and Countess, and would return to Pemberley for Christmas. But then again, Darcy was often separated from Georgiana, who had her own establishment in London, who went on her own seaside holidays….  

Perhaps that would muddy the waters too much. Elizabeth tossed aside the bedclothes, and stood, uncertain, before the door, and then knocked. 

“Yes?”

Elizabeth pushed open the door and said the first thing that came to mind, “Sir— Mr. Darcy— Fitzwilliam— why is it we have separate bedrooms?” 

Darcy was, oddly enough,  _ not  _ reading, though he appeared to have been sitting with a book, apparently staring at the door in anticipation of her arrival. “I beg your pardon?”

“I have never lived in any house where there were separate  _ bedrooms  _ for the master and mistress of the household, merely seperate dressing rooms. I do not like sleeping on my own.”

“You haven’t since we married,” said Darcy, amused. But at her unamused look, he explained, “Once when we were engaged, you told me that you had always shared with Jane— I thought perhaps— after so long a time forced to share, you might wish for a room of your own.”

Elizabeth was touched by this.

“That and my parents never did.”

“I suppose you never had a bedfellow, either.”

“No.”

“Not even Colonel Fitzwilliam?”

“When we were children, yes, but never once we were sent to Eton.”

Elizabeth climbed into bed beside him, and took the book out of his hands, examined the cover, and looked up at him. “Well, sir, we are not your parents any more than we are mine, as it seems. I do not like to presume, or to intrude upon your privacy, but I… I do not like to think of you with no one to share your thoughts with at night.” 

She saw him soften, begin to understand what she wanted from him, what she wished to offer. Darcy tentatively reached out; touched a loose strand of hair at her temple. 

“I… am not a person much interested in status,” she said. “The greatest honor you can do me is to share your thoughts with me.” 

“Ah,” said Darcy, twirling her hair around his index finger with unexpected playfulness, “ _ that  _ is what you have been doing.”

Elizabeth smiled. “What did you think I was doing?” 

She knew very well what he assumed, but she liked to see him blush. 

“Ah— well—” 

She laughed and kissed him. “I have been meaning to ask if I might replace the Turner in my bedroom, but if we are to share a bedroom, I suppose I shall have to learn to live with it. I know it is a landscape, but what  is  it a landscape _of_?”

The debate about Turner lasted until Elizabeth opened the book, and then resumed, unfortunately, at three in the morning, when Darcy realized for the first time, that he need not keep his own counsel in the dark hours before dawn. Still, Elizabeth could not regret it. 


End file.
